to war in order to rescue his nephew Lot, the Torah says that 318 people went along. However, Rashi explains that Abraham really only went with his servant Eliezer, and that 318 is a reference to the numerical value of Eliezer’s name. Why, I asked the Rebbe, does Rashi depart from the simple meaning of the text?
“As I’ve mentioned many times,” the Rebbe wrote back, “you should send this to one of the journals.”
I did, and the Rebbe dealt with the question publicly at a farbrengen in 1987. In the context of a discussion on several other verses, he explained that Rashi does not mean that only Eliezer accompanied Abraham, but that Eliezer gets the credit for the victory as the others who joined them were merely in support roles. This is what made the event so miraculous, and this is why the Torah describes it in greater detail than any other battle.
Then there was a time I asked a question on someone else’s behalf. I used to teach the first grade of the Lubavitcher Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway, and before Passover of 1981, we were learning about the Four Questions asked on the Seder night.
The first of those questions is about dipping the vegetable into saltwater and the maror into charoset: “Why is this night different from all other nights? On all nights we need not dip even once, but on this night we do so twice?”
As I taught this to my class, a boy by the name of Menachem Rosenblatt raised his hand. “But we do dip on other nights,” he asked. “On Rosh Hashanah we dip the apple in honey!”
“Wow, that’s a good question!” I told him. It was such a good question that I decided to write it up and submit it to the journal published by the yeshivah on Ocean Parkway:
I learned the 4 Questions of the Haggadah, and the first one is, “On all other nights we do not dip even once...” I don’t understand this: Don’t we dip an apple in honey on Rosh Hashanah?
Menachem Mendel Rosenblatt
Tomchei Temimim Ocean Parkway
First Grade
The editors published the question and in a footnote they noted that the Rebbe had once been asked this same question by “a little girl.” On that occasion, they said, the Rebbe had explained that while dipping apples in honey is an auspicious custom, it is not obligatory; likewise, one is supposed to eat bread with salt, but dipping it into the salt is only a custom. On the Seder night, however, dipping is mandatory.
But then, a few weeks later, the Rebbe himself addressed the subject at a farbrengen. “There is something that was recently published in one of the journals that should be addressed,” he began, and he went on to cite the question as well as the editors’ response.
Not content with this answer, however, the Rebbe explained that this was not the core reason — he had only said it at the time since he was talking to a young child. He went on to offer a more substantial explanation about the Halachic difference between dipping in liquid, as is done with salt-water and the wine-infused charoset at the Seder, versus dipping in honey. The fact that this in-depth talk was prompted by a question asked by one of my students made a big impression on me, showing just how much interest the Rebbe took in the concerns and questions of every Jew, even a first-grader.
Since 1970, Rabbi Chaim Levi Goldstein has worked as a teacher for young children in Brooklyn, New York. In recent years, he made chinuchtime.com, a website with stories and educational resources. He was interviewed in the My Encounter studio in November 2021.
